Tech

According to legend, Genghis Khan lies buried somewhere beneath the dusty steppe of Northeastern Mongolia, entombed in a spot so secretive that anyone who made the mistake of encountering his funeral procession was executed on the spot. Once he was below ground, his men brought in horses to trample evidence of his grave, and just to be absolutely sure he would never be found, they diverted a river to flow over their leader's final resting place.

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are core components in every mobile phone, television and computer. PCBs can be thought of as acting like a nervous system, forming a network that links the microchips mounted on the board and supplies them with power. One of the most important methods of fabricating large PCBs involves the precision electroplating of copper onto the PCB panel immersed in an acidic electrolyte bath. However, some of the titanium parts used in the electroplating process suffer substantial wear within a short space of time. Replacing these parts generates significant costs.

An engine without oil will not survive for very long. Pistons need plenty of lubricant in order to be able to move within the cylindrical sleeves in the engine block. Two things are known to raise the resultant level of friction. The first is attributed to distortion of the cylindrical bore hole when the cylinder head is attached, which is known as static distortion. The second occurs when the engine is running and temperatures warp the bore hole. The extent of this thermal distortion depends on prevailing engine temperatures and the specific engine model.

The tiny pieces of rock – at 50-100 micrometers smaller than a human hair – have been captured from asteroid Itokawa by the Japanese mission Hayabusa. They were carefully unpacked by experts at the University's School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences.

It is the first time samples from an asteroid have been returned to Earth. Only about 70 samples have been released for international analysis – seven of these are being studied at the University.

When a storm knocks out power, among the first questions to be answered are how many people are affected and when electricity will be restored. Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Energy Awareness and Resiliency Standardized Services application, or EARSS, uses publicly available data and can help by showing grid status in real time.

Scientists are describing what may be a "complete solution" to cleaning up oil spills — a superabsorbent material that sops up 40 times its own weight in oil and then can be shipped to an oil refinery and processed to recover the oil. Their article on the material appears in ACS' journal Energy & Fuels.

With baby boomers approaching the age of 65 and new cases of Alzheimer's disease expected to increase by 50 percent by the year 2030, Georgia Tech researchers have created a tool that allows adults to screen themselves for early signs of dementia. The home-based computer software is patterned after the paper-and-pencil Clock Drawing Test, one of health care's most commonly used screening exams for cognitive impairment.